Saturday, May 13, 2017

As I have mentioned in my online-themed
posts, there is a daily checkpoint question given each day.For the most part the questions will be on
the class subject of that particular week. The basic classes (the ones given to
brand new students) will often throw in questions about finances and career
choices. The economy class I had recently taken was/is a basic class.

I had originally decided to approach
my assignment from a different angle as I had asked my instructor about
non-profit organizations during one of the lectures.I had wondered it any would be considered oligopolies
and so had pulled up references for that.I had actually tried three or four approaches before I had about 20-30
references.I knew I would not end up using
them all and actually ended up going in the same direction as my post.I called my final assignment"Show Me the Money"and added a thesis statement though I
probably didn't need one since it was a starter class for many of my peers.

APA Style is the writing style that is
required by the school.APA stands for American
Psychological Association.Many instructors
seem to put a greater emphasis on the style itself than they do with the
content.I think that is annoying.I had more examples, but it was only supposed
to be 600 words and I have over 800.I'm
pleased that I have received full credit for this assignment.I double spaced for the assignment itself,
but will do not so here.It just looks
weird as a post.

Show
Me The Money Conflict

"Everyoneshould be respected
as an individual, but no one idolized. - Albert Einstein.

All people deserve to be treated
with respect regardless of what position
they hold.A single mother struggling to
put food on the table should not be treated as though she does not matter, nor
should a president of a large company expect to be worshiped or take advantage
of others because he has more money or power.We are all human beings, not statistics. Oligopolies and poverty levels
are statistics.

An Oligopoly can be defined as a few
large firms that control a larger percentage of the market than all the other
competitors put together (Study, 2013).Oligopolies form from competition and advertising enticing the customer
into believing that theirs is the best product (O. Market, 2017) .They do this by offering goods at a lower
cost or a deal of "buy one get one free" or some other
"reward" for purchasing said product from them and not their
competitors.

For example, there are several cell
phone providers - but according to study.com (2013)it appears that AT&Tand Verizon deal with more than half the
consumers' cell phone plans, followed by T-Mobile and Sprint.Those four cell phone plan providers make up
for 99% of all consumers with cell phone plans leaving every other cell phone
provider all lumped into one percent.

Some of the lures these markets have
used is, "keep your same cell phone number" "switch for
free" "we will pay your old phone bill if you make the switch"
and there are consumers who actually go back and forth between companies trying
to get the best deal. Then there are those who choose not to deal with the
larger companies because they all seem to fail at great quality customer
service.It is not just cell phone plans
that have an oligopoly, but fast food chains as well.

I have never considered the food
industry as having oligopolies and yet Welker's Game Theory (2013) used two
popular food chains to explain oligopoly.Burger King and McDonald's have long time seemed like rivals - trying to
outdo one another enticing consumers with prices or selling how themeat is cooked or how fast service.

Some people are under the impression
that it is the American Dream to get ahead, to build an empire and earn
billions of dollars.That may be the
case for some, but not all Americans have that dream.According to The Founder, the McDonald Brothers had set up shop just to make an
honest living.It was not their dream to
blow up so big that they would lose control over a concept they had.Ray Kroc believed it was his dream to head a
food empire and kept the McDonalds name, though the McDonald brothers were no
longer involved.Kroc paid a high price - though not as high a
price as did the McDonald brothers (Hancock, 2016).

According to 20/20the top six fast food chains - including
Burger King and McDonald's - made up for
6.6 billion dollars in 2015 and yet 52% of their employees are on some kind of
welfare assistance.The cameras followed
Terrance Wise, who worked for both McDonald's and Burger King.As he spent most of his day either working or
traveling to get there, it gave him little time to spend with his family.It's disheartening as he watches unsold food
being thrown away (Reality, 2017).

I live in Douglas County, which once
was a thriving community.Sawmill
workers may have had dreams about how they would spend their money after they
retired from the saw mill where they had worked for many years and expected
more to come. When the sawmills closed in 1978, those who could afford to leave
Myrtle Creek packed up their belongings or sold off what they could, to find
work in another location, generally in another state.Circumstances changed whatever dreams they
may have had(Heilman, 2014 p 78).Very few people (if any) choose to be poor.

A rich person may donate $1,000 to a local charity anduse it as a tax write off.For him to write a check for that amount is
no big deal.For him, it may be just
chump change.Another man may spend only
$7.00 on a swimsuit so that his daughter may have a birthday gift to unwrap
(Reality, 2017) and though the amount of $7.00 seems so much smaller than $1,000, the
poor man is giving everything while the rich man gives something that he may
consider small.

If we treat one another with
respect, regardless of our position, we create better human beings.Humans should be made to feel humane and not
a statistic.Respect may be the first
step taken towards stamping out the poverty.

References

Einstein, A. (n.d.). Quote of the Day May 9th. Retrieved May
09, 2017, from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes_of_the_day.html

Friday, May 12, 2017

I have now
completed my economics course.My
instructor has completed grading all of my work, and so I will go ahead and
share what I have turned in.

On my
first post this month I shared a video of a phone service parody.This is the discussion that went with it:

"How many of my classmates remember the
landline and payphones? Funny how perspective changes from being a child to
being an adult. Our responsibilities are not the same, and therefore we view
the world in a different way. For example, I never personally had to wait for
AT&T to come out and install or repair a telephone, but my mom did. Back
then we didn't have the option of cell phones or even provider plans for that
matter. The Bell System had a monopoly all across the nation with its "Bell"
trademark on every phone booth. Every household that had a phone received a
bill from Ma Bell, Mountain Bell, Southwestern Bell and others (depending on
which part of the nation you lived).

"By
1979 AT&T employed over a million people within all of its Bell locations
(History). They were the phone company. There was no competition (Easterbrook,
1985). If you had a phone you either dealt with them, or you could forgo
dealing with them which meant you also gave up the privilege of having or even
using the phones. (Remember all the pay phones were provided by Bell)

"I
was still in high school in 1979 when Ma Bell settled a law suit brought on by
the justice department (Barger, 1984). I understood the negative effects that a
monopoly causes and was happy about the Bell System's 'break-up" in 1984.
My great aunt had worked for and retired from Mountain Bell. I wanted to ask
her opinion but was not allowed to bring up the subject. I'd forgotten all about
that until I started doing my research for this topic.

"I
think monopolies are dangerous - at least for the consumer. The telephone
company is just one example of what a monopoly does to the economy. I wonder
how many of my classmates remember the parody included with my references.

The instructor as well as eight
students responded to my post. Here is a funny story I may have shared in a
post before.I brought it up again as
different class members would reminisce over the landline:

"I
have to share a funny story that has nothing to do with perfect competition or
monopolies, but rather about the rotary phone (remember those?) My
husband was a realtor who would bring home rare treasures every now and
then. One day he brought home a rotary phone to plug into the jack that
was in the hallway - this way the boys could answer calls without having to run
to the kitchen."Our
three boys (all younger than the cell phone) stood around it and looked at it
and at each other. Finally, one of them asked, "How does it
work?"

For this week's discussion,
we were given the choice to speak on oligopolies or poverty.This was my discussion post:

"Funny how we were given a
choice to discuss oligopoly or poverty as I feel that the two seem connected. I
am not saying that Oligopoly is solely responsible for poverty, but I do think
it is one contributing factor. Let me use an example of the banking industry.
There are hundreds of banks, perhaps thousands, located throughout the country.
Yet according to the pie graph (Jennings, 2016) below, there are only four
banks which deal with over half the nation's money. Half! That is a lot of
power to put into four banks.

"As a customer, having dealt with
three of the four banks, though their initial customer service seems to be
professional and friendly, it felt like it is only a facade. Once I had been
lured in it felt like the Oligopoly (in this case the bank) preys on my
financial weakness and feeds itself out of my pocket (Parramore, 2011).

"In some cases I had not made
the choice to deal with the large bank, but had made a loan purchased from a
competitor that may no longer be in business as it was swallowed up by the
larger bank as well. I think Bare Truth (2013) explains it best when the
comparison is made that the "ideal" is someone believing he may share
a small piece of the wealth as it may be "melted" onto him, when in
reality, the rich get richer by sucking finances from the poor like an inhuman
vacuum.

"If you live from paycheck to
paycheck, you are better off putting your money in a smaller bank or credit
union. I personally do not support any oligopolies if I can help it. I bank at
a local chain that I would guess most of you have never even heard of. I
actually had not heard of them until I moved into this county.

"I think oligopolies seek
power, often at the expense of their own employees in which the dollar
seems to be a higher priority than human welfare (My Reality; 2017). In my
opinion, supporting oligopolies seems to be allowing them to have unnecessary
power.

"Parramore,
L. S. (2011, October 11). Banking Has Become an Oligopoly Instead of a
Competitive Business -- And That's Really Bad News for Us 99%. Retrieved from
Alternet:
http://www.alternet.org/story/152695/banking_has_become_an_oligopoly_instead_of_a_competitive_business_--_and_that%27s_really_bad_news_for_us_99

My
instructor than asked me to explain why I would recommend a small bank or
credit union over the larger banks.My
response was:

"In my experience, the larger
banks have always "charged" me to keep my money in the bank. If
a deposit (biweekly paycheck) is made on the same day that my written checks
(bill pay) have cleared, they will do the withdrawls before the deposits and
charge me for each check that has gone over which wouldn't have been an
issue if the deposit would have been cleared first.

"I realize that my check
should not even be written if the money isn't in the bank. Knowing it
will be in the bank, I have taken it on faith that the deposit would clear
first. After the bank "robbed" me by charging me for each
check, I was short for the next set of bills.

"This has never happened for
me with the credit union. The smaller unknown bank that I am
currently with in Oregon is very much like a credit union. Deposits clear
before withdrawals are made. I don't have to have a mandatory
savings to open a checking account. I only had to have a 25.00
minimum to open an account.

"I struggled from paycheck to
paycheck more with the large banks. I have not had that problem with
my credit union or the bank I am with in Oregon."

I
had also used this response to another class member on her post:

"I
agree that this has been an interesting week for topic
discussion. I took a class once in which the instructor picked two people
to represent a very small fraction of the world. He proceeded to carry
out his demonstration by distributing groceries that he would pull from a few
bags that he had. He had three of each item and would pass them out
accordingly:

"Each of the two students in front
received an entire box of crackers for instance. The remaining box of
crackers would be shared among the remainder of the class (there had to have
been at least 28 students) and continue with each grocery item until the bags
were empty.

"His demonstration wasn't on poverty
exactly, but rather the wealth in United States as opposed to some other
countries. US gets two entire boxes of crackers while everyone else has
to share just one. But not all US citizens are enjoying the metaphorical
crackers - I think his demonstation would now be less than one cracker per
class while the wealthy get to stock up on the remainder.

"It's a problem that has existed
long before the Great Depression. I think it's well past time that we
reevaluate ourselves and our values."I will post my final assignment tomorrow.

About Me

I am a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend . . . I am a memory preserver and I enjoy learning. I have read a few Blogs and am a bit reluctant about starting my own. I don't believe I have anything pertinant to add to the Bloggers walk of life. (to learn why this blog is so named, read my first post created January 1, 2012) http://beneaththewraps.blogspot.com/2012/01/introduction-beneath-wraps.html